BROOMFIELD, Colo. (AP) — A Colorado man was convicted Thursday of killing his wife after stalking her while posing as her ex-boyfriend.
Jurors reached the verdict against Daniel Krug, 44, a day after beginning deliberations. They found him guilty of all four charges he faced — first-degree murder as well as two counts of stalking and one count of criminal impersonation.
As soon as the verdict was read, a police officer put handcuffs on Krug, who was wearing a gray suit and sitting with his lawyers. Krug is scheduled to be sentenced on Friday. He faces a mandatory sentence of life without parole.
Krug's parents sat behind him as the verdict was read in the quiet courtroom. The family of his wife, Kristil Krug, sat on the other side of the courtroom.
With his marriage to Kristil Krug falling apart, prosecutors said Krug decided to play “puppet master” by scaring his wife and then trying to win her back by protecting her from the fake stalking, uniting them against a common threat.
Kristil Krug, a biochemical engineer, kept a log tracking the increasingly threatening texts and emails that suggested she was being watched. As police investigated the messages, prosecutors said Daniel Krug began to realize that he could face criminal charges and started plotting how to kill his wife to silence her and because she didn't want to be with him anymore.
Prosecutors said he waited for her to return to their suburban Denver home on Dec. 14, 2023, after taking two of their children to school and then knocked her unconscious and stabbed her in the heart.
“He didn’t love her. He hated her. Think about what he did to her,” Senior Deputy District Attorney Kate Armstrong said during closing arguments Wednesday.
At the time of the killing, the ex-boyfriend was an eight-hour drive away in Utah, where he was living, according to investigators.
The defense stressed there was no physical evidence linking Daniel Krug to the violent killing, noting that there was no blood found in his car or his clothes, which his daughter said were the same he was wearing when he drove her to the bus stop that morning. None of Daniel Krug’s DNA was found at the scene, though partial DNA from an unknown person was found on her neck, the defense said.
Daniel Krug’s lawyers alleged that sloppy police work had failed to keep Kristil Krug safe before she was killed and then bungled the investigation into her death. The detective who investigated the stalking that Kristil Krug had first reported in October 2023 was lazy and incompetent, they said. The defense also stressed that police failed to test Kristil Krug’s phone for fingerprints even though they alleged Daniel Krug sent texts from it after killing her.
Shortly after the time when authorities said Krug killed his wife, he was at his usual coffee shop buying his morning latte. He complained that he had been given an iced drink instead of a hot one and waited for a replacement. During closing arguments, defense attorney Phillip Geigle questioned whether that is something a “cold-blooded killer” would bother to do.
Prosecutors said that he wanted to be seen as “cool as a cucumber” getting his regular morning coffee before heading to work and also likely planned to wear gloves so he would not leave any DNA linking him to the killing.
According to investigators, the email account that was used to send messages to Kristil Krug was created on the computer network at Daniel Krug’s workplace. A burner phone used to send some of the texts, purchased with a gift card registered to Daniel Krug, was often found to have been in the same general location as his phone, Armstrong said.
Three of the home’s surveillance cameras, which Kristil Krug’s mother said she installed because of the recent stalking, were not recording when she was found, according to Daniel Krug’s arrest affidavit. The one in the garage was covered with tape. The defense said the tape also had DNA from an unknown source.
Prosecutors say Daniel Krug told police that he thought the ex-boyfriend was to blame for her killing. But after police confirmed that man was at home in Utah when his wife was killed, he said maybe Kristil Krug was having affairs, they said.
“It’s always the husband,” Armstrong quoted Daniel Krug as telling detectives as she said he rolled his eyes.
District Attorney Brian Mason walks out of court following the murder conviction of Daniel Krug in Broomfield, Colo., on Thursday, April 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Thomas Peipert)
Relatives of murder victim Kristil Krug hug outside of court following the conviction of her husband Daniel Krug in Broomfield, Colo., on Thursday, April 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Thomas Peipert)
An image of the home in which Kristi Krug was found stabbed and beaten to death is seen April 1, 2025, in Broomfield, Colo. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
FILE - In this undated image provided by the Broomfield Police Department, Colo., shows Daniel Krug. (Broomfield Police via AP, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street is heading toward the finish of a strong week as U.S. stocks rise on Friday close to the all-time high they set just a few months earlier, though it may feel like an economic era ago.
The S&P 500 was up 0.4% in afternoon trading and potentially heading for a fifth straight gain. It’s on track for a 5% rise for the week, which would be its third winning week in the last four, as hopes build that President Donald Trump will lower his tariffs against other countries after reaching trade deals with them. Such hopes have driven the S&P 500 back within 3.3% of its record set in February after it briefly dropped roughly 20% below the mark last month.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 208 points, or 0.5%, as of 1:57 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.3% higher.
Trump’s trade war had sent financial markets reeling worldwide because of twin dangers. On one hand, tariffs could slow the economy and drive it into a recession. On the other, tariffs could push inflation higher.
But this week featured some encouraging news on both fronts. The United States and China announced a 90-day stand-down in most of their punishing tariffs against each other, while a couple reports on inflation in the United States came in better than economists expected.
It was “a week to remember,” according to economists at Bank of America led by Claudio Irigoyen and Antonio Gabriel. But they also said they're not expecting a significant drop in volatility, and they're not changing big-picture forecasts.
“There is still huge uncertainty regarding the impact of tariffs on economic activity and inflation,” they said in a BofA Global Research report.
That uncertainty has been hitting U.S. households and businesses, raising worries that they may freeze their spending and long-term plans in response, which would hurt the economy. The latest reading in a survey of U.S. consumers by the University of Michigan showed sentiment soured again in May, though the pace of decline wasn't as bad as in prior months.
Perhaps more worryingly, expectations for coming inflation keep building, and U.S. consumers are now bracing for 7.3% in the next 12 months, according to the University of Michigan's preliminary survey results. That's up from a forecast of 6.5% a month before.
When everyone expects inflation to be high, it could kick off a vicious cycle of behavior that only worsens inflation.
To be sure, only some of the University of Michigan's survey responses for the preliminary May reading came after the United States and China announced their 90-day truce.
On Wall Street, Charter Communications rose 1.6% after it said it agreed to merge with Cox Communications in a deal that would combine two of the country’s largest cable companies. The resulting company will change its name to Cox Communications and keep Charter’s headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut.
Novo Nordisk’s stock that trades in the United States fell 2.9% after the Danish company behind the Wegovy drug for weight loss said that Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen will step down as CEO and that the board is looking for his successor. The company cited “recent market challenges” and how the stock has been performing recently.
In the bond market, Treasury yields were mixed. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.44% from 4.45% late Thursday and from more than 4.50% the day before that. Lower bond yields can encourage investors to pay higher prices for stocks and other investments.
The two-year Treasury yield, which more closely tracks expectations for action by the Federal Reserve, rose to 3.98% from 3.96%. It had been as low as 3.93% earlier in the morning, before the release of the University of Michigan's survey.
Hope remains that this week’s better-than-expected signals on inflation could give the Federal Reserve more leeway to cut interest rates later this year if high tariffs drag down the U.S. economy.
In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed in Asia and higher in Europe.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 inched down by less than 0.1% after the government reported that Japan’s economy contracted at a faster rate than expected in the first quarter of the year.
AP Writers Jiang Junzhe and Matt Ott contributed.
Specialist John McNierney, left, and trader Anthony Carannante work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Currency traders work near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), top left, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won, top center, at the foreign exchange dealing room of the KEB Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, May 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
Currency traders work near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), top left, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won, top center, at the foreign exchange dealing room of the KEB Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, May 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
A currency trader talks on the phone near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) at the foreign exchange dealing room of the KEB Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, May 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
Trader Edward Curran works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Trader Jonathan Corpina works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Trader William Lawrence works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Traders Jonathan Mueller, right, and Michael Capolino work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
